Monthly Archives: May 2018

It’s held steady a couple hundred pounds of wrinkled, bruised, and broken old man. Like my old man, over thirty years ago.

This cane was James Evan Love’s kingly reward for completing weeks of physiotherapy and for surviving five strokes and a fractured hip. It was the stalwart sceptre he’d earned by graduating from wheelchair to walker to quad-cane to wooden cane. It made him look even older than he was, but it kept him on his feet, where he wanted to be.

It was a symbol of his triumph and recovery, but it was also a symbol of his hard-earned weakness and degradation. He would never walk without it again. He had become diminished and slow. He was finally, at sixty-four, an old man. The tiger was toothless…

Dad died a difficult death in 1989, pretty much coughing himself to death through pneumonia. I was hollowed-out and exhausted by losing him, and relieved for both of us that he was no longer in pain.

I was desperate to keep some of his belongings – the things he used most often or the things of his which I thought said the most about him. I kept Dad’s wheelchair for a while, later loaning it out to a different relative, and then to the grandmother of one of my wife’s best friends. Eventually, the chair came back to me and I wheeled it over to the care home next door. Dad’s beat up wooden cane stayed propped up in the corner of my room for more than thirty years as a silent echo of how we lose people and power.

A few months ago, I suffered a painful back injury, and as it got worse, I found myself unable to get out of bed or even roll over without blinding pain. After admitting myself to ER and getting some painkillers, I returned home and began to slowly get up and shuffle around. It would take me a few minutes of agonizing wriggling on my stomach to get to the foot of my bed, and then another 30 seconds to screw up the courage to push my hands over to my dresser where I’d lean, standing, and catch my breath before trying to walk to the bathroom. I measured the spaces between reachable surfaces and objects that could support my weight. Everything seemed so far away. Walking had become a highwire act with no net.

Walking hurt like hell and was a scary and tender prospect. My lower back could spasm at the slightest strain, and when it did it hurt like a cattle prod. I pondered the idea of buying a cane for myself. I didn’t want to be infirmed and incapable like an old man. I saw myself shuffling around our apartment in my sagging cardigan, talking to my cats, and sweating and swearing at the slightest effort. I stopped shaving, and white whiskers peeked out of my cheeks, reminding me of him, looking bristly-chinned on a Sunday morning.

I started to notice Dad’s cane again, and I accepted it once I began accepting my situation. I went practical and determined in my thinking: I was going to have to be able to walk if I was going to heal properly. Just use the bloody cane, I told myself.

So Dad’s cane became my cane, my centre of stability, and my most reliable tool. I did heal fully with the help of a Physio and some hard work. In fact, I’m probably in better condition now than before my back injury.

When I look at our cane now, I don’t just see a broken old man. I see the hard work that you must do and the help that you must be willing to accept in order to get back on your feet again.